Death By A Thousand Cuts

March 16, 2014

You have seen the Start Up NY adds "start or grow your business tax free in New York" the new business-friendly state. What a crock of fertilizer. New York is the state that has mastered the torturous art of death by a thousand cuts as far as business is concerned.

Now, if you are one of the seriously restricted list of anointed ones, and can sweet talk a college into favoring your business, they will limit your torture to a mere 900 cuts.

The Start-UP rules are written so that anyone can be excluded for virtually any reason, yet broadly enough to allow the inclusion, by exception, many businesses that have the right political stripe. The program is simply a state orchestrated business patronage program to benefit politically correct cronies of the state university program and the administration. Think Solyndra on the state level.

The program makes no recognition of the fact that energy, and utility taxes, are among the highest in the country. You will be paying those taxes. You would be still paying workers compensation tax, which is 15 to 20 percent higher depending on your industry, than the national average. The program makes no recognition that liability insurance in New York is higher than anywhere in the country. It does not account for ridiculous regulations, and reporting requirements, and permits, for virtually anything and everything you want to do. Then there are the fees, the state is so loath to call them taxes.

Heaven forbid if you run a business that is not politically correct, such a gun manufacturer, or chemical processor, or well driller, quarry, or mine, or any industry that burns fuel as a necessary process. The state has predetermined, you will be a loser.

Some categories of business are even targets for exile. The governor has said, if you support a biblical view of marriage, advocate for your Second Amendment rights, or even think that unborn children, that are developed enough to survive out side of the womb, deserve protections, New York does not need you. As business owners and managers, we are supposed to check our religious and moral beliefs at the door.

If New York was concerned with actual job growth and opportunity, the path has been laid out clearly by business professionals (www.bcnys.org/inside/gac/2014/Legislative-and-Regulatory-Agenda2014.html). Sadly our state is more concerned with perception than reality. Reality is no concern of theirs. They are the one wielding the knife. To paraphrase a famous Margaret Thatcher quote: The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of living flesh to slice.